The star witness of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Oyejide Sukanmi, on Thursday admitted before the governorship election petition tribunal sitting in Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State, that Governor Dapo Abiodun, performed excellently well after sighting the West Africa Examination Council(WAEC) result belonging to him.
Recall that the PDP and its governorship candidate in the March 18 gubernatorial poll in the state had alleged that Abiodun forged his WAEC result, thereby should be disqualified.
The star witness, under cross examination by the counsel to the governor, Prof. Taiwo Osipitan SAN, was asked to read out the content of Governor Abiodun’s WAEC certificate, which he did and specifically commended the brilliance of the governor.
He, however, said there were certain controversies surrounding the authenticity of the result as claimed by his party, in which regard he was asked to present a contrary certificate as a proof of the claim but failed to do so.
On the issue of documents tendered by the star witness, counsel to Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) Dr Remi Olatubora, said it should be taken as tendered since several documents have followed that pattern, the position that was maintained by both counsels to Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and All Progressives Congress (APC).
On the video evidence the star witness tendered to claim disruption of voting process, the witness agreed after being cross examined that it was downloaded from the websites of Arise and Channel Television.
When asked if he knew the type of camera used to produce the video recording, he answered that he did not know.
In the same vein, counsel to APC, Onyechi Ikpeazu, got the star witness to concede that the video recording was edited and that while the electoral process lasted for almost six hours, the video lasted for just 16 minutes.
Also, it was discovered after thorough scrutiny of the video evidence that a name in Delta State, ‘Sapele’ was repeatedly mentioned.
The star witness was then asked about the party in power in Delta state, in which he answered, PDP, the counsel, therefore, put it to him that those thugs in the video must have been sent from Sapele, which he declined to confirm.
Another witness invited by the PDP, Samuel Oduntan, an expert in Statistics and Digital Forensics from Kaduna, in his report presented figures that were at variance with figures in the exhibit submitted by PDP (Exhibit 453) especially on number of PVCs collected in some polling units
His report clearly contradicts PDP’s claim of over voting in some polling units, as he admitted that he found some inaccuracies in some other claims by PDP with his report.
Tribunal, in reference to the Electoral Act, deferred ruling on the admissibility of the video to the final Judgment, as it marked the Certificate of Compliance and Flash Drive as exhibits of the Court respectively.
It also directed that the Video recording should be played in the open Court for the Tribunal members alone.
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